Adages: How to win friends and influence ad spenders

Factory, an international film monthly based in London, will be launched at the Cannes Film Festival this year. It's the brainchild of former Broadcast columnist Howard Webster. A pre-launch special edition distributed at the American Film Market in Santa Monica, Calif., features an interview that appears to serve as a coda for the pub. It's with Rick McCallum, described as George Lucas' producer. "If you want to be true and have a real, voice," says Rick, "you're going to have to piss people off because that's the way it works." Subsequent pages feature adoring profiles of non-pissed-off talent agents, movie companies, entertainment lawyers and an entertainment flack (these people also took out ads in the pub). The first issue, not out yet, will even butter up a select group of Madison Ave. creatives with a group portrait. Adages was slipped the photo. Can you name these happy faces?

Reaching for the stars

Yeah, talk about reach: Viacom's MTV Networks went all out last week to create regime change on TV. Launching a pre-emptive strike at broadcast networks, the cabler threw the Mother of All Upfront sales presentations with a star-studded cast that made the annual NBC pitch-typically the most glamorous and expensive upfront-look like amateur hour. Highlights: Kid Rock performed a mini-concert amidst a blaze of booming pyrotechnics and profanities, with Viacom chief Mel Karmazin in the audience applauding wildly; Kid's girl Pam Anderson made her entrance dragging a compliant Joe Uva, CEO of Omincom's OMD, in handcuffs (the captive client); Jerry Mathers (the Beaver) and Barbara Feldon (Agent 99) were channeled back from cable pre-history to share the stage-in the flesh-with a host of other relics; and finally, Ozzy Osbourne, shuffling across the stage led by his daughter, appeared absolutely abstemious alongside Farrah Fawcett who was dazed and confused, misreading the teleprompters (the word "embodies" became "nobodies," describing a top MTV exec) and traipsed absentmindedly off stage instead of lining up with the other stars to take a bow.

It was a hard act to follow, but at Ad Age's annual Upfront Summit two days later, David Verklin, CEO of Aegis Group's Carat (also spied at the MTV after-party), once again predicted-as he does almost every year-the demise of the upfronts, this time calling them "goofy." But this year, on the heels of MTV's Mother of All Upfronts, reports of the upfront's demise-as Farrah might have put it, mangling Mark Twain-are immature.

Belt-tightening

McDonald's Corp., the world's largest fast-feeder, is not only under fire for making people fat, it's fending off a job-discrimination lawsuit by a 420-pound man.

A U.S. District Court recently dismissed the chain's motion to drop a case brought by Joseph Connor, who alleged a local Mickey D's reneged on a job offer as a burger slinger because of his size 54 pants.

"The allegations described in his lawsuit are completely false and without merit," says McDonald's in a statement.

Gary Phelan, Mr. Connor's lawyer, observes that great chefs are often heavy. "That will be a theme in this case. The only question is how he cooks, not how he looks."